Lucasfilm Previews 'The Future of Film-Making' Using Real-time Motion Capture and Game Engines

This week a great video was released showing Lucasfilm's chief technology strategy officer, Kim Libreri presenting what they hope to be the future of film making. Using real-time motion capture and a game engine, Lucasarts and ILM were working on a video game project by the title 1313. While the project was shown off in 2012 at the E3 gaming conference, it was shut down later by Disney after the purchase of the company. This video, however, gives us a behind-the-scenes look at some of the technology that came out of the project and a glimpse at where some see the CG-film elements moving in the next decade. Lucasfilm is said to be confident in the concept as it has been testing it in the development of a series of prototypes created with the teams at Lucasfilm's and ILM. "I think that the current way that we make movies is very pipeline stage process, takes away a little bit of the organic nature of a movie set or real environment. I'm hoping real time graphics technology brings back the creative possibilities that we have in the real world," Libreri said. "If you combine video games with film-making techniques, you can start to have these real deep, multi-user experiences. Being able to animate, edit and compose live is going to change the way we work and it's really going to bring back the creative experience in digital effects." The creative possibilities are exciting and the video above speaks for what could be in the future. Could you imagine being able to better direct CG-intensive shots in real-time and tweak in the moment to get the almost-exact shot wanted? That would add a whole new level to what's possible for today's artists - even if it starts with the bigger budget films. The idea of real-time changes and even allowing viewers to eventually participate and interact with the film, from changing elements of the film, like personalizing a start character's features, to adding themselves into it, adds a new engagement for the viewer to an extent that we haven't ever seen Watch the video above and get a glimpse into what Lucasfilm is working on and what could be the future of CG elements in film.   Start playing with the pros today and learn new rendering skills with powerful rendering training.